Companies have conventionally exchanged electronic business information using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). EDI is a set of protocols that enable the transfer of data between different companies using networks, such as the Internet. Both the United Nations Joint European and North American working party (UN-JEDI) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) have developed standards that outline EDI. While EDI has allowed companies to communicate more efficiently than through the use of traditional paper-based communications, smaller companies face challenges to participate in electronic business (or electronic collaboration). These companies need to invest in complex and expensive computer systems to be installed at local computers, or to register with marketplaces at remote computers accessible through the Internet. In either case, the companies are bound by the particulars of the local or remote computer systems. Changes lead to further costs for software, hardware, user training, registration, and the like.
More recently, the development of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) has offered an alternative way to define formats for exchanging business data. XML provides a syntax that can be used to enable more open and flexible applications for conducting electronic business transactions, but does not provide standardized semantics for messages used in business processes. Initiatives to define standardized frameworks for using XML to exchange electronic business data have produced specifications such as the Electronic Business Extensible Markup Language (ebXML) Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) and ISO 11179, which is incorporated in ebXML CCTS. Despite the efforts of such initiatives to develop a single standard for conducting electronic business, a number of competing XML and non-XML-based standards and proprietary formatting schema have been developed and are in common use, including cXML, ebXML, SAP IDoc, SAP IFR XML, OAG BOD, ANSI X12, EDIFACT, SWIFT, FIX, RosettaNet, and xCBL. In addition, some companies continue to use EDI-based systems based at least in part on their substantial investments in EDI integration. In one way, however, EDI is compatible with the XML standards because existing EDI data format may be easily translated to and from XML. The large number of available schemas complicates efforts to conduct electronic business because a company will often adopt a particular schema that is not supported by all of the company's trading partners.
Further complicating matters is the fact that many of the schema are constantly evolving (i.e., new business data elements are regularly added). Currently, human modelers sometimes use intuition to create schemas and business data elements that the modelers believe businesses will use in transactions without actually knowing exactly which data elements will be needed. Some of these created data element definitions are not used in business transactions for some reason. Modelers are, however, reluctant to remove the definitions from a schema repository without a reliable indication that the data element is not needed. Therefore, the schema repository may store many unneeded data elements and modelers may not construct schemas in an efficient manner.